What should I check before removing a drive from a pool?

When removing a drive from a pool, there are a number of important checks that should be performed before commencing the removal process.

1) If the drive is being removed because there is a concern that it is failing, it is highly recommended that a manual removal is performed. Drive Bender will attempt to move files from the drive being removed to the pool, however, if there are issues, this process can hang and / or be unreliable.

2) Drive Bender will attempt to determine the state of the drive being removed. If it does find that the drives have had issues (i.e. S.M.A.R.T. details are out of spec), a warning is displayed. At this point, it is recommended that you check the drives health before proceeding with the automated removal, or perform a manual removal.

3) While Drive Bender is removing a drive, some files may be locked and not accessible during this process. It is highly recommended that any services or applications that may access the pool during this time, are shut down. A classic example is the Windows Server client backup service. We have had instances where this service has corrupted the backup database because it could not access certain files.